But in the third quarter, Stout erupted for 11 of Parkland's 15 points, hitting three of four shots from 3-point range.

"We have had trouble against the matchup zone and we know that's how a lot of teams are going to play us so we have to keep getting better at it," Stout said. "I just have to be aggressive and hit my jumpshots.

"Every guy in our starting lineup, plus the seniors coming off the bench and even some young guys like Michael Zeky and Jacob Bartholomew can score. So that makes it a lot easier and there's no pressure."

Stout's big third quarter allowed Parkland to pull away to a 35-24 lead and then Devante Cross took over in the fourth quarter with seven points, including a 5-for-6 performance at the foul line.

A revitalized Whitehall team coming off big wins over Liberty and Emmaus last week, tried its best to hang around.

Senior Brett Radocha continued his recent streak of stronger offensive performances and scored 21 of the Zephyrs' first 31 points. However, missed layups, four missed free throws and costly turnovers took a toll against a team that doesn't allow much margin for error.

Whitehall had a brief flurry in the fourth quarter that featured a three-point play by Radocha and a steal and layup by freshman Mikey Esquillin to make it 42-33 with 4:55 left, but Trojans sophomore Sam Iorio and Stout combined for nine Parkland points to push it back to 51-35 and the game ended in ho-hum fashion.

"The pace of the game was what we wanted in the first half," Whitehall coach Jeff Jones said. "Holding them to 20 points was a goal. We wanted to make them uncomfortable and get them to do things they don't normally like to do.

"But they responded in the second half like a good team will. They took it to us."

The Trojans gradually wear teams down at both ends of the floor and have met every challenge so far except the 50-47 loss to St. Joe's Prep in the Lower Merion holiday tournament.

"That's the second time we saw a really good matchup zone and St. Joe's Prep was the first," Parkland coach Andy Stephens said. "That's kind of our Kryptonite right now and something we need to work on. We wanted to control the tempo as much as we could, but when you play against a good team like Whitehall and that defense, it's hard to do. They won the tempo battle, but we won the game."

Stephens said he got on his squad at halftime about being more aggressive at the offensive end.

"It wasn't the amount of points we scored, but it was the way we were playing," Stephens said. "We weren't asserting ourselves as much as we should have been."

Stout, who has received Division I scholarship offers from Lafayette, New Hampshire and Penn, said it's all about getting wins.

"Winning is the most important thing to me," he said. "I'd rather have no points and win than have 30 and lose. I think everybody on our team has that attitude."

With the regular season hitting the stretch run, Parkland wants to maintain its high level of play and has Nazareth on Friday and state-ranked Susquehanna Township in Sunday's Hoop Group event.

Whitehall, meanwhile, doesn't want to let one bump in the road knock it off course.

"Nobody won a championship tonight and no one lost a championship," Jones said. "We look at this game as a stepping stone and we just want to keep getting better moving forward."